Racism and Resistances in English Football Steve Greenfield
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Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 6 Article 7 Issue 2 Spring When the Whites Go Marching In? Racism and Resistances in English Football Steve Greenfield Guy Osborn Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn, When the Whites Go Marching In? Racism and Resistances in English Football, 6 Marq. Sports L. J. 315 (1996) Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol6/iss2/7 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHEN THE WHITES GO MARCHING IN?t RACISM AND RESISTANCE IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL STEVE GREENFIELD* Guy OSBORN** Interesting to see George Best sympathising in TV interviews about the racist abuse Cantona received. On January 12 during an Evening with George Best and Rodney Marsh at Croydon's Fairfield Halls, Best was asked about the Andy Cole sale. His reply? "7 million is a lot to pay for a nigger."I I. INTRODUCTION The phenomenon of racism can be seen in two broad areas within the context of Association Football.2 Firstly, racism may be seen in terms of exclusion from (or limited opportunity in) the game for certain ethnic t "When the Whites go Marching In" is a version of the hymn "When the Saints go Marching In" and has been sung by football fans whilst attending "away" matches in other countries. The hymn is also adapted by individual clubs in the U.K. by substituting the name of the team for "Saints." In this context the reference is to English supporters indicating their disapproval of black players. See JOHN WiLLAMS ET. AL., HOOLIGANS ABROAD 149 (2d ed. 1989). * Co-director, Centre for the Study of Law, Society and Popular Culture, University of Westminster. Mr. Greenfield is a graduate from the Universities of Middlesex and London, and has researched and written widely on issues relating to sport, music, and film. ** Co-director, Centre for the Study of Law, Society and Popular Culture, University of Westminster. Mr. Osborn is a graduate of Leeds University and Leicester University, and has written widely on a number of areas within the emerging field of law and popular culture. 1. Martin Thorpe, Seeing Red When the Air Turns Blue, Ttm GUARDIAN, Jan. 28, 1995, at 19. George Best is generally acknowledged as one of the finest of the United Kingdom's (he was born in Northern Ireland) post war footballers, although he never played in the finals of any major International tournament due to the failure of Northern Ireland to ever qualify. His crowning moment was perhaps scoring in the 1968 European Cup Final when his club side Manchester United beat the Portuguese side Benfica 4-1, becoming in the process the first English side to win the trophy. Because of his good looks and pop star image, Best was often described as the "fifth" Beatle. See TOM TYRRELL & DAVID MEEK, MANCHSTER UNrrED: THE OFFICIAL HISTORY (1992), GEORGE BEsT wrTH Ross BENSON, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE BUBBLY (1991). Andy Cole is a black footballer who was transferred from Newcas- tle United to Manchester United in January 1995 for a then British record transfer fee. 2. Association Football is the historically correct term for what is termed in some cultures "soccer." The popular term "soccer" is in fact bastardised from "association football" See GIVING THE GAME AWAY: FOOTBALL, POLITICS AND CULTURE ON FrFE CoNTINENrs (Ste- phen Wagg ed., 1995)[hereinafter Wagg]. In this article, the term football will be used rather than soccer. MARQUETTE SPORTS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 6:315 groups and is often bound up with stereotypical views of the abilities and characteristics of black athletes.3 This article, however, is concerned with the racist abuse that players suffer from spectators,4 a phenomenon which has become a significant factor in the game over the last twenty years.5 Our analysis charts three distinct attempts to address this aspect of racism within the game: i) Action by the authorities, clubs, players and supporters in the form of campaigns; ii) "General" and "Specific" legislation; and iii) Direct physical action by some fans. The question of racial insults is of course not confined to football or indeed sport; football bears the brunt of our analysis precisely because the groups mentioned above have seen the need to take action. While our analysis is confined to England, football in one form or another has a long and varied history that is not bounded by class, culture or continents: Football is the universal sport in the world. The celebration of the game often transcends national and political lines of division. The increasing convergence of football styles at both international and club level (i.e. 'Europeamization' of Brazil and the concentra- tion of the world's best players in Italy's Serie A) is allied to the convergence of the mass media and the interests of the economi- cally powerful football nations and clubs.6 Association Football as we know it today can be said to date from the formation of the Football Association in 1863, and the game can truly be 3. See, e.g., Vivek Chaudhary, Asians Can't Play Barrier,THm GUARDIAN, Feb. 10, 1996, at Sports 1; Racism Bars Way to Top Jobs in Football,Tm GUARDIAN, Feb. 19, 1996, at 4. This is not confined to football. On cricket, see, e.g., Mn MAROUSEE, ANYONE BUT ENG- LAND: CRcIC-T' AND THE NATIONAL MALAISE (1994); Steve Greenfield & Guy Osborn, Oh to be in England? Mythology and Identity in English Cricket, (1996) SoCAL IDENTITIES (forth- coming 1996)(on file with authors). 4. While this is mainly seen in the spectator/player axis, there have been reports of racist abuse between players. This was perhaps made most visible during Italia '90 and the game between West Germany and Holland, when the Dutch player Frank Rijkaard (son of Dutch West Indian parents) was given a second yellow card for a foul on the West German Rudi Voller. After the yellow card Rijkaard (whose yellow card meant he would be suspended for the next match) ran after V1ler and spat at him. Although Rijkaard now insists that his reaction was not because of a racist comment that V1ler made to him, a persistent claim has been that Voller made a racist remark at Rijkaard that provoked a normally placid man to react in this way. That night there were riots on the German/Dutch border as football acted as both a catalyst and a symbol of centuries of bad feeling between the two nations. See SIMON KUPER, FOOTBALL AGAINST THE ENEmY (1994). 5. The authors do not seek to claim that the racial abuse of players is a purely modem phenomena; it has though been seen as a more significant (and visible) issue as the number of black players has grown. 6. RICHARD HAYNES, Tim FOOTBALL IMAGINATION: TiE RISE OF FOOTBALL FANZINE CULTURE 142 (1995). 1996] WHEN THE WHITES GO MARCHING IN? said to be the "people's game" in that it not only successfully straddles the boundaries mentioned above but is globally the most popular sport. North America is the one major region in which football has failed to fully take off; this fact proved crucial in terms of the successful bid by the United States to stage the 1994 World Cup. In choosing the USA to stage the showpiece of international football, "FIFA demonstrated that a thriving national association football culture is no longer a prerequisite for hosting the World Cup. A thriving commercial culture, however, 7 is." While the national leagues have still largely failed to flourish, the tournament itself was a massive commercial success that generated in excess of four billion dollars worth of business. Further, there is the sug- gestion of the USA being granted another World Cup finals early in the next century.8 The footballing powers certainly see the importance of the game in global terms and the increasing pollination of the game is crucial to maintaining its preeminent position (the "conquering" of the United States is seen as a fundamental component of this). This global- ization does not, however, come without cost: [T]hese myriad universalizing processes have been checked by dissenting voices from various sections of the political spectrum within Western Europe and an aggressive, desperate nationalism, particularly in the 'liberated' Eastern European states. The social anxiety caused by political instability has led to an outbreak of often violent racism and the increasing threat of coherent fascist organizations. 9 It is this infiltration of football by far right groups and the increasing incidence of racist abuse by football supporters that provides the fulcrum of our analysis. II. FOOTBALL FANDOM, RACISM AND THE FAR RIGHT And as Cantona walks from the field he's ... Oh my goodness... Cantona has... This is quite unbelievable... He's... And now the crowd are... In all my years of commentating I have never seen anything quite like this.'0 On January 25, 1995, Eric Cantona of Manchester United and France left the field of play having been sent off during a Premier League match 7. Wagg, supra note 3, at 179-180. 8. I at 185. 9. HAYNES, supra note 7, at 143. 10. Jonathan Pearce commentating live on the match on London's Capital Radio. Noted in IAN RIDLEY, CANTONA: THE RED AND THE BLACK 25 (1995). MARQUETTE SPORTS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 6:315 against Crystal Palace. On his way to the dug out he reacted to com- ments made by a spectator by launching a "kung fu" style kick at a fan in the stands.